Google cancelled adwords account

Google, cancelled, adwords

[stingray9]

After several years of advertising on Google Adwords and spending over $ 3,000.00 a month advertising with Google, I received notice that my account was cancelled and cannot be reinstated.
This hapened while I was out of the country and during the peak holiday purchasing period.
To date I have received an email stating that we violated Googles porn policy and ignored several notices of this.(No emails ever received)
We are a 50 year old manufacturer of store fixtures and POP displays and have never sold any other product except those that we manufacture and have been producing in the US for almost 50 years. These items are for selling products in stores (hooks, racks, stands, etc.) and cannot in the wildest stretch of the imagination be considered porn.
We never received a single email accusing us of any violation of Google policy. We have requested, but not yet received proof of our "supposed" violation. Meanwhile the clock is ticking on holiday store requirements and we are losing a great deal of business every day. I have also requested the phone number of the employee who told us of the cancellation, with no reply to date.
Do I have any recourse or is this another case of the Huge Corporate Giant ruining the small business, because of an internal blunder.
How do things like this happen in our economy?

[engine]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld

There have been others with similar cancelled accounts.
[webmasterworld.com...]
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[La_Valette]

Yet another in a disturbing pattern of seemingly unfair closures.

I wonder what's going on here. My latest wild conspiracy theory (for which I freely admit that I have no evidence other than my own paranoia) is that some Google employees are running private Adwords accounts for their own benefit and abusing their position by shutting down innocent customers whose business intrudes on their turf...

[pdivi]

I'm no lawyer, but I doubt you have any recourse.

Things like this happen because Google's competition has been asleep at the wheel for way too long. There is some hope in MSFT's Vista-->Live-->Adcenter combo. If it brings some real competition in PPC, maybe Google will be less quick to turn down revenue from good customers.

If you have been tracking your referrers, I'd suggest contacting the better publishers directly to inquire about banner or text ad placement. It will take some of the sting out of the volume loss, and it cuts out the middleman's (Google's) margin so ROI tends to good.

Good luck.

[jecasc]

Is it perhaps possible that someone got access to your adwords account and ran ads without you noticing?

[Kobayashi]

I understand you did not have porn ads but can you be more specific about what part of their porn policy they claim you violated?

[dcheney]

I would also take a close look at your site to make sure it wasn't hacked and hidden porn links added.

[Moosetick]

Your description does make it sound like you got hacked. How strong is the password you use for Adwords?

The good news is that you are an advertiser. There are lots of places willing to take your advertising money. If this is your big time of year I'd spend my time looking at a different advertiser so I could get back up and running to capacity AAP. Then I would get with Google and fix whatever they think happened.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Assuming I've understood correctly, to have an account that focuses on retail display items and receive a notice regarding issues with adult content certainly bears further exploration by the AdWords support team.

We have requested, but not yet received proof of our "supposed" violation.

Stingray9, replying to the most recent email you received is exactly the right thing to have done, and may well have resulted in this being cleared up already. That said, because this case does seem unusual, please feel free to 'sticky mail' me with your account details, and I will make sure the right folks take a look. (Being new to WebmasterWorld, you may not be aware that I am an AdWords employee.)

We never received a single email accusing us of any violation of Google policy.

As an aside, it's worth checking your 'spam' filters/folders to see whether any emails from the AdWords team may have been automatically directed there.

AWA

[La_Valette]

These items are for selling products in stores (hooks, racks, stands, etc.) and cannot in the wildest stretch of the imagination be considered porn.

unless of course you're looking for a hooker with a nice rack for a one-night stand... sorry, I couldn't resist :)

[stingray9]

My thanks to all who responded to my dilemna concerning cancellation of my Google Adwords adverising campaign.

Good News! After five emails my account was reactivated today.
No appology. No response to my request for the exact reason my campign was cancelled. No offer to compesate me in any way. No reason for me not receiving any prior notification from Google.

What a way to run a business.

[Pengi]

Reinstatement seems the nearest Google does to apologies!

Glad to see they let you back in.

[kea12345]

What is the porn policy that they do not allow? I mean, they certianly allow porn ads. Is it certain types of ads or is it the use of dialers? I know that the latter is banned.

[kea12345]

The only thing I could find was:

"Advertising is not permitted for the promotion of child pornography, any sexually suggestive content involving children, or other non-consensual material."

Other than that, I am not sure what the problem would be.